Recently, technology for allowing the same moving picture to be viewed using a High-Definition TV (HDTV) at home through ubiquitous communication and to be viewed outdoors using a mobile phone, a Personal Multimedia Player (PMP), etc. has been developed. At this time, “place-shift” technology for allowing a moving picture viewed at home to be continuously viewed from a location at which viewing had previously been terminated is important.
The term “place-shift” technology means a technology for allowing a moving picture, viewed using one device at one place, to be viewed using another device in a different place. During a place shift operation, in order to continuously view the originally played moving picture, a function of storing the current location of the played moving picture and starting to play the moving picture from that location using another device is essentially required.
For example, when a moving picture played on a Personal Computer (PC) is intended to be played outdoors using a mobile phone or a PMP, seamless play is possible only when the moving picture starts to be played at the time point at which the playing of the moving picture had been terminated on the PC, on the basis of information about the running time of the moving picture in the PMP or the mobile phone. In this case, this requirement is valid only when a moving picture played on the PC and a moving picture played on the PMP or the mobile phone are identical to each other, and moving picture compression is performed by changing only the size of the moving picture or varying compression conditions with respect to the same moving picture source. When a moving picture, which is identical to a moving picture played on the PC and a specific section of which has been deleted or edited on the PC, is intended to be viewed on the PMP or the mobile phone, there is a problem in that, since the play location of the moving picture was changed by the deletion or editing, it becomes impossible to continuously view the moving picture from the time point at which the playing of the moving picture had previously been terminated.